Live every day as if it were your last, for some day you are sure to be right!

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Potato In Search Of A Couch

All I can say is Wow! It's so pretty!

Yep, I finally got my TV hooked up and running properly, and man oh man, is it ever a thing of beauty. Having not watched HD television anywhere but the sports book for the past year, I'd forgotten just how much of an eye candy treat it was. And now, if I weren't so tired, I'd be up all night watching Ice Road Truckers re-runs or something equally brainless.

Anyhow, once I got home late last night (after winning a whopping $22 at poker), there was a pink sticky card on my door from the postman, telling me that there was a package waiting for me down at the rental office. HDMI cables! Woot!

Unfortunately, the office didn't open until ten o'clock in the morning, and I had to be at work at eleven, so all I could do was pick them up on my way to the casino.

My workday dragged--I'm still not feeling too well, and the day was just a straight grind for me. Normally I have a lot of fun at my job, but I'll be the first to admit that Saturday just wasn't any fun for me. Nothing I can put my finger on, but it was just one of those shifts that had to be endured rather than enjoyed. I was glad to finally pull the ripcord and head for home.

Of course, I'd gotten up early enough that morning to get the TV put together and ready to go on the stand, hoping that the set-up would take just a few minutes. It went pretty smoothly, and once I figured out the initial set-up instructions, I was treated to a beautiful broadcast of the Nascar Busch race from Wisconsin. (Seriously, the people at Sharp need to hire the Suburban Hausfrau as a technical writer. Whoever they've got doing it right now, well, they just plain suck). Well, at first glance it was a beautiful picture, but it didn't quite fit the screen. It was like I had a 44-inch picture on a 40-inch screen. And the TV zoom options just made it worse.

It took me about a half hour of cursing and throwing things before I figured out that there was an HD zoom button on my cable remote too, and it had been set to 'Stretch' when the guy came out to install all my goodies a couple of weeks ago. I set it back to normal, and Voila!--The picture was absolutely crisp, stunning, and perfect.

Normally, I don't give a rat's hindquarters about the Busch races, but it was total sensory overload, and once I got the settings right, I had to sit and watch the whole thing. Oh, and during the commercials, I switched it over to Discovery HD to watch Deadliest Catch reruns. Oh man--just amazing.

I was so tired that I could barely get up out of the chair, but I was also starving, having not really eaten anything since my granola-bar dinner the night before. So I ordered a pizza and some wings to be delivered from some joint over in Whitney Ranch who's menu ended up on my front door the other day (again, something I haven't done in years!). The wings--great, the pizza, not so much. I ate about five of the wings, and after two slices of pizza, I gave up and threw out the rest. It was gross. Manhattan Pizza, you're dead to me! (On the other hand, I found out last week that my new apartment is in the delivery area for Pie Town--that great Chicago-style joint on GV Parkway).

But that was pretty much my evening. I tried to do a few household chores, and started unloading the books and such, but I just didn't have it in me. I'm off for the next couple of days, so I'm guessing that if I get a good eight hours of sleep, I can spend my Sunday doing the final bit of getting the living room together. Once everything is in it's proper place, I'll post an 'after' picture to go with that 'before' one I took the other day.

And now that I've got that awesome new TV, I need to get crackin' and buy me a comfy place to sit. I'm gonna get tired of that camp chair really soon.